


Of Flint nor Steel

by Rainfallen



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: ADWD spoilers, Body Horror, Decay, Gen, Hanging, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-17
Updated: 2013-07-17
Packaged: 2017-12-19 07:45:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/881252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rainfallen/pseuds/Rainfallen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><b></b><br/><i>ADWD SPOILERS</i><br/> </p><p>Prompt: A more in-depth look at the deterioration of the BwoB after Beric’s final death and the rise of Lady Stoneheart, can continue through what happens to Brienne and Jaime after they were last seen in ADWD. Preferably Gendry POV</p><p>Basically does what  it says on the tin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Flint nor Steel

**Author's Note:**

> \--I chose not to check the graphic violence warning because I don't think any of this content could be called graphic, and certainly not beyond what might be found in the books, but please do note the tags above just in case.
> 
> \--Title bastardized from Shakespeare as usual, from _Titus Andronicus_ 5.3.89
> 
> \--Written for [soulshaker91](http://soulshaker91.livejournal.com) in the seventh [Game of Thrones Exchange](http://got-exchange.livejournal.com), summer 2013.

  


_We are what we are_  
 _Don't need no excuses for the scars from our mothers_  
 _And we know what we know  
_ _Because we're made of all the little bones of our fathers_

_And I pray a lot for you_

        ---Daughter, "The Woods"

  
   


Gendry wondered what her face was like in life.

Her first life, her real life, not this half life of a sleepless breathless husk.

He'd held a torch above Lord Beric's head that night, gripped so tightly he could feel the wood splinter and dig into his fingers, but his hand did not waver. Not even when the Lord lay his worn and thin body down on the river bank, the very air banished from his lungs; not even as he seemed to shrink and wilt, his one eye open to the night sky, empty and blank as the crater of the other; not even when the bare bloated body beside Lord Beric's own began to stir and rise, nor when Thoros's hushed exclamation of grief and horror broke through the murmuring of men and waves.

The wind had blown hard from the north west, licking greedily at the flames as her eyes opened and their dull red caught the flicker and spark of his torch. A forceful howl had cut through the night air, close enough to raise the small hairs on his neck, and soon followed by a mournful chorus of more distant responses that quieted the men around them. Even the river seemed silent to his ears then. And even now, many months later, with the days grown shorter and darker—and with them their band more discordant, their number swollen but their vision skewed—he could hear the echo of the wind and the howling of wolves that heralded her rise. He wondered if they had been a welcome or a warning.

On his bravest nights, in those days that quickly followed Lord Beric's death and Lady Stoneheart's ascension, he stared at her across the night fires, stared at her ruined face, and wondered. He had seen terrible things. Horrors. Death and decay and bodies turned inside out for the unfathomable, sick joy of it. Men so wrong on the inside that they no longer lived or loved or acted as men. A woman three-days dead with loose, rotting skin and open wounds was not the worst of it, perhaps, and even if she was ( _she wasn't, she wasn't_ , he told himself), the world around them would get no comelier. The ugliness of war and winter and present hunger and distant lords and skin stretched too tight over bone would never lessen, and Gendry began to think that perhaps their trek of vengeance and blood would never end either.

Better to stare, better to numb his eyes as calluses might numb his fingers. Better to be steeled against it so the next time a screaming squire of nine years with the twin towers of Frey emblazoned across his surcoat was lifted into the air by a rope he might not turn away, might not heave his meager rations onto the snow-crusted boots of the man behind him. And so he stared. And once—only once, on a night some hours after he had filched Tom's flagon of sour red, while the bulk of the men lay sleeping around them and _she_ turned the crown of swords over and over in her mottled hands—Gendry let himself wonder if there had ever been anything of Arya in her face.

\--

It was not until he watched her face when she hanged another man—a Frey proper, this one, son to the great Lord—that he believed at last that this could be _her_ mother. He had seen that look before, that perfect blending of hate and triumph writ small on a face long lost to him. He did not know whether to hate her more or less for it, for being at last familiar but in all the wrong ways. When they reached the Inn at the Crossroads and he discovered the cold, abandoned forge at the back of it and saw the small heads peering from under the porch, something tight in his chest seemed to loosen with relief. Here at least, with the familiar heat of the forge at his face and honest work for his hands, he would not have the terrible face before his eyes or the terrible weight of justice hanging heavy around his own neck.

The days at the Inn were both easier and harder. A constant bed and days spent without walking for hours left him with an uneasy excess of energy, and though he spent long hours over the forge every day, little of the work required his full concentration. Gendry had not apprenticed under Tobho Mott for six years for nothing; mending chain, reforging broken blades, hammering the odd piece of plate, pouring arrowheads—these were things he had mastered at three-and-ten. Such occupations left far too much room for thinking, and Gendry was never so miserable as when he let himself think too long on things he might have changed and did not, or, worse, things beyond his power to change entirely.

It seemed to him that the days grew shorter and darker, for every evening when he looked from the coals and sparks and flames of the forge to the cold grey of the sky, it seemed darker. Little Willow Heddle never thought so little of her station compared to his as to refrain from smacking him with her wooden spoon when he stomped sullenly past her into the common room with mud and ash on his boots, and somehow this gnawed at his heart more cruelly than anything else. He didn't look too closely at her on those nights. He found he couldn't. Jeyne, the older sister, kept her silence when he was in one of his black moods, not for fear of him certainly, but as a small concession born of understanding and sympathy. Jeyne had seen plenty of the ugliness left in the path of a war herself, and had more years spent with family for which to grieve than had her sister. Gendry recognized the indulgence for what it was and appreciated it, and appreciated that Jeyne kept a level head when he could not all the more.

So his days passed for a few turns of the moon, with the sounds of the children and the inn and his hammer ringing in his ear when he lay down on the doors-edge of the straw mattress at night. The routine was only broken the day a freakishly large woman appeared outside the Inn and a few hours later a man wearing a snarling hound's head helm rode into the yard.

\--

When Jeyne returned to the Inn a week later, she brought with her word of the hanging and freeing of Brienne of Tarth under oath of returning with Jaime Lannister as captive for execution. With Jeyne rode Mudge and Pate and a mule loaded with assorted motley chain to be mended and returned. Gendry was to bring it himself, to the underhill to the west where _she_ would be in a week's time. He ought to have known that woman's appearance would bring ill, that his relative peace could not last.

Never in all of his watchful nights months earlier had the Lady Stoneheart ever looked back at him, nor did she ever until a fortnight later. Gendry was to depart the following morning with a meager bundle of supplies to take back to Jeyne and the children at the Inn, but sleep evaded him as ever it seemed to do when the Lady was near. Several of the others were yet awake; Lem and Harwin stood close to catch the few harsh words that she spoke with a loose hand pressed against the wreck of her throat, while Thoros was anchored at her elbow, his face gaunt with exhaustion and resignation. Something like a shudder shook her shoulders when Gendry stepped into the firelight. His eyes sought her out as ever they were wont, and for the first time she stared back at him, those terrible eyes lighting upon him and seeming to burn through his skin and secrets. The stared and stared, and they _judged,_ and Gendry had the sinking, sickening certainty that she _knew._ He had been ready to sink onto a log and take his rest, but her look arrested his movement and he stood silent and still, willing himself not to flinch. In what seemed at once an instant and an eternity, Thoros was before him and his wind-roughened hands drew Gendry away.

"Your face is much like one she would rather forget," Thoros told him later, in the small grey hours before dawn when they were alone and Gendry finally pressed, as he so seldom did.

But that this—this—cursed horror who neglected needful folk in favor of chasing a handful of Freys for a fortnight might recoil at _his_ face was more than Gendry could bear, and the insult was the tipping point to the mountain of the thousand questions and one that had built up over the past years, all driving him to a frustrated outburst.

"Always ‘your face,’" he said, rounding on the priest with an unprecedented ferocity. "What is it about my bloody face that gets you lot so riled up and ready to –I don't even know what! Lord Arryn and Lord Stark and that Queen and even — seven _hells_ , who is it that I look like so much that even M'Lady—even _she_ can't stand the sight of me?"

Thoros met his furor calmly, like one who had seen it more times than this once, and somehow that was even more infuriating. Gendry considered giving the frosty aspen trunk beside him a healthy backhand to vent his anger and give him at least a little pain to focus on, but in the end he couldn't even see the sense in it. He didn't _want_ to focus, and the anger was enough. He blew out a breath, frustrated, and continued. "Not the Mountain, for sure, and not any of these Freys that I've seen, not any Lord I ever knew—"

"Lord?" Thoros interjected at last, the look in his eyes suddenly keen and sharp.

Gendry made an aborted gesture with one hand, frustration knotting deep in his shoulders, but the diversion had done its job; his voice was steady and almost calm when he continued. "The big wench, the—the Lannister traitor. The one _she_ let go to find the Kingslayer. When she saw me first, before Biter and the fever took her, before . . . she called me 'my Lord.' Said something about my face and seemed to think I was someone else for a spell."

The red priest regarded him in silence for a moment. "Renly," he suggested, and at Gendry's shrug he simply nodded as though his confusion was confirmation. "It is well known that Lady Tarth served Lord Renly. I knew him in my time at court. The resemblance is not as exact as all that, but it is . . . undeniable."

Gendry shook his head in confused appeal. "Lord Renly? The old king's brother? What about _him_ did people hate so that—"

"Come lad," Thoros interrupted him. "You're no fool. Don't act one. It isn't just your look that startles people. It's the reason for it, it's the _source_ of it that takes them off guard. You know nothing of your father? You heard nothing, guessed nothing?"

Gendry was already shaking his head at the presumed implication. "Not him. She asked about the king, but not him. And I never saw Lord Renly, but I heard plenty of talk in the shop. He was never much older than me, and wasn't near so interested as the king in the w—"

And then, his tongue twisted mid-word under the weight of realization, and distantly he saw Thoros's face change in response to his own, the knowledge and understanding thrumming tense between them like a taut string. His head swam and the bark of the aspen dug into his fingers where he gripped it—gloveless like the fool he was—for steadiness. "The shadow of the Red Keep," he repeated to himself quietly, and struggled to choke down a senseless, angry laugh.

"Just so," Thoros affirmed, and brushed a light sprinkling of snow from the shoulder of his cloak. "What Lady Tarth saw as Lord Renly's look was Robert's. Or Steffon's, if truth be told—Baratheon through and through—but I never met the man. No one who ever looked upon Robert in his youth could see any but him in you. Even the very width and height of you is all Robert."

Gendry's mind swirled with memories of tangled golden hair, shallow bowls of brown, the hollow ache in his belly that his mother's tuneless humming could not soothe away. _A king. A king. What could be worse than a king?_ He rubbed a hand across his face, rough skin catching on the weeks' worth of beard growing there. He felt very suddenly tired, and wholly unwilling to dwell on this... this... _this he didn't know what_ a moment longer.

"About Lady Tarth," he said instead.

Thoros frowned, curious.

"Will we hunt her down, too, if she doesn't come back?"

Thoros's mouth thinned. "That isn't for the likes of me to say now, is it?"

Gendry leveled the blankest look he could muster. "What if she decided it was someone else's fault she couldn't find her—her daughters? Would we hang them, too?"

Thoros was not fooled. "You expect the same treatment from her, do you?"

Gendry scoffed, a hand buried deep in the tangle of his hair. "If she'll hang somebody for not finding her daughter, how much more someone who had another and lost her?"

"That isn't on you, lad. No, close your mouth—I'll have none of your gainsaying. That _is not on you_. You hear me? The Hound took her out from under us, and if any of our number were to take the blame after him, t'would be me. Don't try to martyr yourself on that pyre, boy, I'll have none of it."

Gendry glared at him, feeling the warmth of his rage rekindling and settling into a slow-burning, sullen glow in his chest. "What is on me then? That Frey squire we hanged? Or the one come with Lady Tarth, his throat all a mess now and life just a ransom 'til she comes back with the Kingslayer? I'll buy that the Lady Tarth is a lion for all her ravings, and on her head the lions' crimes, but that one's no more than a boy, and no criminal. Is that on me? Is that on you? We're to bring _justice_ , that's what I swore to, and to punish those what—"

Thoros's grip on his arm was like an iron vice even through the leather and padding. " _Think,_ lad. Words have power, consequences! Or has your time with us taught you nothing? Think before you say these things! One whisper in the wrong ear, and. . . ."

He did not go on. He need not go on.

Gendry shook his arm free.

Thoros passed a hand over his eyes, pausing to rub wearily at a temple. "We are not as we were. I do what little I can to bring the men's minds back to our mission, back to the people who need us, the Lord's path, but it will take time."

Gendry was done with words, having said all he meant to say and more, so he waited.

Thoros was silent for a long time. And then, quietly: "If helping the people is what you’re after... you won’t find it here, not just yet. Go back to the inn and look after the little ones with Mudge and Jeyne, and pray to God that she doesn’t call you back to fight, if it turns your stomach so. Or cinch up your belt and walk out to find the other half of our number. Find Lord Dayne."

Gendry's head snapped up at the name, eyes already narrowed mouth open to protest, but Thoros held up a hand. "No? Well, then, the choice is yours. Pick your path. I'll not give you orders. Know this, though, lad: We were king’s men, once. Though few enough of those who remain to us ever laid eyes upon his Grace. Mayhaps one day we’ll be king’s men again. Until then . . . it's best you keep your head down. The night is dark and full of terrors."

"The night is dark and full of terrors," Gendry murmured, and turned away.

\--

He was half a day's ride from the Inn when he stumbled upon them. It was easy enough to do; both of them were large and on horses larger still, thrashing through the woods in jingling armor and not pitching their voices half so low as they should have.

He dropped from his own mount, letting the lead line for the mule rest on the saddle. She wouldn't stir a step she didn't need to.

When he stepped in front of them, his sword was in his hand, and his hand was steady.

"M'lady's camp is to the west," he said mildly.

Brienne of Tarth drew in a startled breath, but her sword was in her hand in half a second.

"And what's this?" asked the man beside the lady Tarth, who, though worn and ragged and decidedly more handless than he had been in the great procession in King's Landing, could only be the Kingslayer. "More outlaws, is it?"

Gendry raised his chin. "I'm a knight," he said. "And if protecting the people from foul men like yours makes me an outlaw, I'll own that. I don't see you doing any better."

The kingslayer groaned. "A visionary. Do you know this one, my Lady? I'm sure you'd get on admirably."

The woman didn't bother answering him, and her gaze never faltered from Gendry's face. "Gendry. Please. We mean you no harm, and I ask that you but let us pass. I am fulfilling my oath to the Lady Catelyn; you have nothing to suspect me of or reproach me for in that regard."

She stumbled the slightest bit over _her_ name, and Gendry bounced the blade a little. "Don't lie to me," he said. And then, "If you're trying to run, you shouldn't be this close to the Inn. The Brotherhood has men all throughout these lands."

"We are not running, ser," the Lady told him, her tone all injured dignity. "We go to find Sansa Stark. And I swear to you, we mean her no harm. I swore an oath, ser. I swore an oath to return her safely to her mother, and I do not intend to rest until it is fulfilled."

Gendry— _gods damn it_ —Gendry believed her, and cursed himself for a fool in the same instant. "And if m'lady kills the ones you left for security?" he asked. "Will you still deliver the girl safely then?"

A flash of pain flashed across her broad, scabbed face, but her jaw tightened and her expression shifted into resolve. "I will do all in my power to return quickly, to protect these innocents. But this is — I swore an oath, ser. I will find her daughters or I will breathe my last trying."

Daughters. _Daughters._ By sheer habit, Gendry mentally cursed the seven gods this time, them who had not so much forsaken him as simply never paid him a moment's notice. Less the fools they, to overlook such a fool as himself. "Which way are you going?" he asked.

The two shared a glance. "North east," the Kingslayer said after a moment. "And if you don't mind, _ser,_ we really should be getting along."

Gendry shifted the pack strapped over his shoulders, considered the breadth and thickness of the Lady's shoulders and the ill angle of the Kingslayer's sword belt. The clouds were low and thick in the sky; a snow sky, he had learned once from Jeyne. He tugged up the hood of his cloak.

"North east," Gendry muttered, resigned and angry and eager all at once.

He swung himself back into the saddle and hazarded a look at the trees that surrounded them. There was moss growing more heavily on one side of them all. He gripped the reins tight and cast a glance over his shoulder at the two of them.

"Come on, then," he said, and they rode.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [tumblr](http://sergendry.tumblr.com) if you're so inclined.


End file.
